A New Testament Greek Primer

Rating:
Summary: An excellent classroom textbook
Review: A New Testament Greek Primer has proven an excellent workbook style text for my beginning Greek students in Japan. Best features: 1. Distinguishes between memory paragdigms (must memorize) and recognition paradigms. 2. Chooses vocabulary based on NT frequency data.
3. Uses only NT material for translation exercises, thus avoiding artificial constructions and strange Greek style.
4. Morphological and grammatical explanations very clear, building on similar phenomena in English. 5. Homework in workbook varied; thorough drill on requisite skills before moving ahead. Incremental step by step procedure.
Worst feature: pushes students to apply knowledge to vocabulary they have not learned yet; this may be sound pedagogy but a little too much and the "unknown" words are often not in the dictionary in the back of the book.

Rating:
Summary: Wish I could give it a higher review...
Review: but I can't. This beginner level Grammar of NT Greek is a very fine effort in certain ways that are important. But as I labored through it as part of my seminary curriculum, I simply found too many things about it that were downright distressing, thus the mixed review I'm giving it.

On the positive side, this Greek Grammar workbook is quite thorough for a beginner level grammar. Those wanting the basics of NT Greek will find that Baugh covers a surprisingly comprehensive array of topics and principles that are really quite essential. He appropriately breaks from Metzger in focusing the beginner level student on more reasonable levels of vocabulary memorization that provide far more 'bang for the buck' then Metzger's approach. In addition, he covers nouns up through the third declension, including prominent exceptions, as well as verbs and participles of multiple tenses, voices, and moods. While I will heavily criticize his workbook exercises later, it should be noted that the answer key for the exercises is needed and does allow the student, depending on his/her aptitude, to independently work through his Grammar. Also, his glossary of many grammatical terms is also a welcome part of this Grammar, particularly those who struggle with grammatical terminology in English (ie: what is a 'predicate nominative'). This glossary will help in that regard, and this is important since such grammatical terms are used with regularity in this Grammar, as they should be.

Now for the negatives. Baugh's thoroughness on balance is good but he does at times devote too much ink to peripheral and decidedly secondary concepts that too often fog up his book. And this really comes through when Baugh attempts to present more complex areas such as participles and even adjectives or pronouns. There are much easier ways to effectively teach participles, contract verbs, adjectives, and irregular aorist forms then what we see from Baugh here. Participles and irregular aorists in particular are difficult enough on their own without Baugh making them more confusing, often unnecessarily. And this leads to my last major problem with the book - its completely unnecessary introduction of arbitrary difficulties into the workbook exercises. With aggravating regularity, Baugh pollutes his workbook exercises either with vocabulary words that haven't been taught yet, concepts that haven't been introduced yet, and in unnecessarily emphasizing minute points (usually without explanatory resolution based on what the student should know from the applicable lesson) that in many cases are purely academic and matters of translation philosophy rather then basic issues of grammar. I understand that there is a certain teaching philosophy that believes that these forms of instructional 'sneak attacks' serve the noble purpose of stretching the student which is supposed to lead to increased inquisitiveness and the like. Well, as a student trying to learn a completely new language, Greek (like English) has plenty of built-in irregularities and oddities to keep students on their heals without Baugh's help. The level of confusion he unnecessarily introduces into the workbook exercises goes a long way towards making his Grammar inaccessible and unhelpful to those who are unfortunate enough to not be studying under a good professor who can compensate.

This Grammar had the potential of being truly great. It is thorough and carries with it the great potential of instilling a very good foundation for more advanced study and literacy of NT Greek. Unfortunately, if Baugh's book is any indication of the effectiveness of traditional forms of teaching NT Greek, it is little wonder why so few have achieved a genuine level of competence in interacting with the language. And such a result is very sad indeed since God chose this language as the tool to communicate his special revelation starting with the Gospels.

Rating:
Summary: Self-Study Students: Steer Clear!
Review: If you're considering this book for self-study (i.e., unless it's an assigned text for a course), keep looking because this one may really hinder and frustrate you in learning Greek. Its problems are not only with its content but with the physical construction of the book itself.

The Primer is supposed to be used as a workbook as evidenced by the format of many of the exercises (the "circle this" and "underline that" variety), and the fact that the book is pre-punched to fit in a three-ring binder. That's all very fine and good except with just a month's heavy use, the binding falls apart and you'll have individual pages coming detached from the rest; if you want to take the whole thing apart to put in a binder, you will find that the glue is just strong enough that you'll rip and mangle more than a few pages in the process. In addition to this, there just isn't enough room to perform the translation exercises in the workbook unless you can write very small and legibly, so part of the exercises will be in the workbook and the other part you will have to do on other paper.

As for problems with the content:

First, when Baugh uses Greek sentences to illustrate points of grammar, he very often uses both vocabulary and word forms that haven't yet been learned. So, the beginning student really cannot understand the example sentences in the early lessons until he has nearly completed the course. This greatly hinders the student's ability to understand the point (since he doesn't have a comprehensible example), and causes a lot of frustration and self-doubt ("Have I forgotten this? Did I somehow miss this word in the vocabulary? Why doesn't this make sense to me???") It's only now that I'm reviewing for my final exam that I understand many of the early examples! I'm reading through chapter 10 (adjectives), and one example sentence uses a third-declesion noun (chapter 11) and an infinitive (chapter 25) plus two vocabulary words that aren't learned until chapters 11 and 20. There are only five words in the sentence!

Second, Baugh only uses actual Scripture in the translation exercises. While I can understand why this might seem desirable, it turns into a conscious or unconscious crutch for students who know the English Bible. J. Gresham Machen's ("New Testament Greek for Beginners") approach of using Scripture-like language-but without using Scripture itself-is to be preferred, because it forces the student to rely on basic parsing techniques to translate rather than some combination of parsing and unintended recall of familiar English Scripture passages.

Even though I've had only bad things to say about the book, now that I've finished the course, I'm quite comfortable reading New Testament Greek, so it can't be all bad! But, I was assigned this as a text for a seminary Beginning Greek class, so I also had the benefit of excellent classroom instruction and peer interaction. So, if you're a seminary student assigned this book, now you know what to expect. If you're a self-study student, keep looking-there must be something better!